New KPMG-owned Xero competitor Wiise looks to rhipe for growth

New KPMG-owned Xero competitor Wiise looks to rhipe for growth

KPMG’s new cloud accounting player Wiise is hoping a new relationship with the “Netflix of cloud licensing subscriptions” will help it quickly gain traction to take on the likes of Xero and MYOB.

The accounting software platform, which has been jointly developed with the Commonwealth Bank and Microsoft, is targeting mid-market businesses which have outgrown Xero but do not require all the features, or costs, of Oracle or SAP’s enterprise resource planning software.

KPMG partner and executive director of Wiise, John Munnelly, told The Australian Financial Review that selling the service through software distributor rhipe would make it attractive to companies already using Microsoft’s Office 365 products.

“We realised we were good at building the software and making it work, but we should focus on that and bring in rhipe to get it out to market,” Mr Munnelly said.

“We’re just scratching the surface at the moment of working out how to go to market, but looking at rhipe, they have thousands of customers on Office 365 … so when their partners go out and sell Office 365, they can now sell a product that will help them run their business as well … and that means we should grow really quickly.

“The solution we’re providing is more complex [than Xero or MYOB], so it requires some set-up time and it does need some people there to help get it up and running.”